Nongshim, New Wok, Big Bowl Chapagetti Noodles Review

Most of my noodle reviews are about Japanese ramen, but I like noodles of all kinds. What I'm reviewing today is the Big Bowl version of Chapagetti from Nongshim.  I've never actually had Korean Jajangmyeon in a restaurant, but have tried Korean jajang/chajang sauce in a couple of noodle and rice dishes where there was an actual bean sauce.

Jajang is a fermented black bean sauce that is the Korean version of a Chinese dish and it is unique to Korea.  Jajangmyeon is just black bean sauce noodles.  "Jajangmyeon dates back to 1905, when it was introduced in Gonghwachun (공화춘; 共和春), a Chinese restaurant in Incheon Chinatown run by an immigrant from the Shandong Province of China. The restaurant is now the Jajangmyeon Museum.(from Wikipedia)"  Kind of like Japanese ramen after WWII, it became popular after the Korean War as it was a cheap food to eat.  Jajang is a sweetish sauce with a strong earthy taste of black bean paste and it is pretty tasty, but you have to be used to the black bean flavour.  A jajang sauce contains onion, meat and/or seafood, and is thickened with starch to serve over noodles or rice.

Chapagetti is Nongshim's brand of jajangmyeon and it is a pretty good name that is a portmanteau word made up of jajangmyeon (aka chajangmyon) and spaghetti.  Nonghsim first introduced this product in 1970 and it is Korea's leading brand of Jajangmyeon.  Chapagetti combined Neoguri instant ramen (also from Nongshim) became internationally famous as it was featured in the Academy Award winning movie Parasite to make Ram-Don (Jjapaguri).

Front of the Nongshim Chapagetti bowl.  It has the nifty Chapagetti logo on the front in big white lettering and a red and black outline around it.  I think the logo comes across as kind of friendly and casual.  I'm not sure what the NEW WOK stands for but jajang sauce is supposed to be stir fried.  The rest of the picture shows some tantalizingly tastly looking thick noodles and it has a nice pale gold background.

The lid of the cup.  It has a subdued kind of elegance to it with the golden yellow two tone background, the richly coloured noodles in the bowl. and the hinds of asian motifs behind the Big Bowl text.  It looks like some nicely sauced noodles in the picture.

3/4 view showing the big paper cup off.

Preparation directions in English.  This is one of Nongshim's products that are manufactured in the USA.

Nutritional facts, ingredients, and manufacturer's information.

Inside the bowl are two packets.  One is the powdered Jajang sauce, and the other is an oil packet that would give the sauce its sheen and enhance its flavour.

I added the powder to the noodle block.  You can see there are some soy protein bits along with dehydrated cabbage.

I added boiling water up to the fill line, closed the lid, and let the contents sit for four minutes.  After  this, I thoroughly mixed the sauce powder into the dish as most of the water had been sucked up by the noodles as they rehydrated.

The jajangmyeon is not a soup dish.  It is a fried noodle dish which works well with fried instant noodles (naturally!) so the noodles should just be nicely coated in the sauce.  The version I prepared seemed to be a litter wetter than it should so I'd try it with a little less water or let it sit for an extra minute or two.  The flavour of the jajangmyeon was pretty good and it reminded me a lot of the instant yakisoba noodles you can get with a powdered yakisoba sauce base.  It didn't have a super strong black bean sauce flavour, but it was nice and savoury with sweet undertones which is a must.  It wasn't bad at all and I'd try this again, but if you want more of a black bean sauce flavour, try one of the instant noodles with an actual liquid sauce packet.  The noodles are nice and thick, have a good bouncy chew to them to make the dish quite enjoyable.  I bought three of these, gave one away, so I have one more to enjoy in the future.

Closeup of the noodles with some of the textured protein and cabbage.

 

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